Thursday, May 23, 2013

The H.O.H. dun and the sulphur hatch.

Ok, so I belong to a group on a fly fishing website called the fly of the month group. This months fly was any H.O.H. fly. H.O.H. meaning hackle on hook.

My friend Tom tied up some duns in a variant style, with the trimmed hackle for bodies. I thought they looked pretty cool. So I decided to twist up a thorax dun. I figured why not do a favorite dry fly pattern of mine and seeing how the hackle was getting trimmed for the body the v cut hackle just made sense to me.

The fly consists of only hackle and thread. So there is nothing on it that can absorb water, thus making it a perfect dry fly. The idea that Tom had behind the hackle cut body was for it to give the translucent effects that the naturals have to them. Sounds reasonable to me, so I twisted one up in sulphur and headed on out to a local freestoner for the sulphur hatch.

So with my trusty 2 wt and H.O.H. I made my way to the stream at the last bit of twilight. I went a favorite pool of mine. It consist of heavy riffle leading into and long tail out. I can always find some trout sipping and gulping insects near or in the tail out.
On the way to the water I was being buzzed by sulphur duns and spinners flying about. I just hoped the rain would hold out long enough for me to get a trout or two.

The clouds cleared a bit and the moon came out and bathed the pool in
moon light. I could see fishy noses poking up from the water every so
often. I made my first cast and landed a bit short of the feeding lane.
The next was on point and the trout took the H.O.H.. A good fight later I
had the hen landed.
I hooked several fish and one was very large as i couldnt really move the fish with my 2 wt. haha. The fly popped on that fish and I remembered why I didnt use mustad hooks anymore...... I ran out of daiichi 1100 in 14! and had some mustad laying around.

I'm not a great photographer by any means! but I'm no photographer at all in the dark! But you can still make out the fly. The proofs in the pudding as they say. I will do a tutorial of this technique very soon. And my daiichi hooks should be on there way! Thank you J.W trout

1 comment:

Hello...This style of dressing using hackle all the way and clipped was new to me. The style looks very good for creating translucency and I really liked the way this is done. Thanks for the tips.....! Every year I end up with a couple of new variations of the most important mayfly in "my" rivers here in Norway (Ephemerella aurevilli/aroni). This summer this will be one of them.Could you say something about how you tie it or maby a link to other sites showing this style?

Johnny Utah

Johnny is an avid fly fisherman, fly designer and fly tier from New Jersey, who is also on the Deer Creek Pro Staff. He fishes over 200 days a year and ties flies every day, 365. He has designed some great trout patterns over the years and is always working on new ones. Johnny has been a featured fly tier for the International fly tying symposium and enjoys teaching fly tying at Ridge and Valleys tying meetings. Johnny loves to share his knowledge of fly tying and fly fishing with the world.